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Covering Hillary: A Visual History

The single biggest factor preventing Hillary Clinton from running for president in 2016, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush write, is the media.

Her relationship with the fourth estate has indeed been a rocky one. The former first lady has been excoriated—called a killer, a conman, a calculating wife and a dysfunctional leader. But she has also been extolled as a feminist icon, a shrewd stateswoman, a devoted mother and a thoughtful policymaker. These myriad character sketches—the good and the bad, the offensive and the saccharine, the astute and the naive—have defined Hillary’s quarter-century in the national spotlight, and the magazine covers that represent them provide a fascinating lens into Clinton’s ever-changing image, the nation’s struggle to understand it and the challenge of being the most powerful woman in politics.